Awake, Loved.

What the blue rivers say are not
what they speak,
what the green bells waving in
the brown grass.
Waving leisurely in the wind.
An elephant lumbers past.
War is transparent, a piece of leaf
is caught in an updraft.
You held me, befallen,
in a piece of paper,
in a riddle.

The ground sucks up all the juice,
the sky is blue above me.
What, what say you-
how high does your voice rise,
clear over a clear day.
Clearer than what I say.
I am tired.
My ears flap like an elephant’s.
I read books,
and shun black baskets.
My back aches,
my breasts heave for you in
the dim and the dark
and the sound of the rain
wakens me. Welcomes me.
The still of the night won’t let
me down.
The beat of your heart shelters me,
love.

Riddle.

One day, when she’s old,
she’ll tell you the answer to the riddle
that has been tormenting you for years.
I have heard this one before; the words
curve like a spider’s silky web, they are
put on the shelf in the wine cellar
before being released to the public
If poems beat on the back door,
would you think to answer it?
Would you know, quickly now,
how to explain the ending to every story?
Metaphors drop out of the sky like clouds;
they land on your doorstep,
shaking and shivering in the cold.
Will you take them in?
They are orphans, you know;
they have nowhere else to go.

(Age 23, I think)